h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wrote to them and told them that they make me sick.

Pre mod, or naughty thread?

oh the waiting!! I hope the mods aren't on holiday until Tuesday. The suspense will kill me.

Sorry to disappoint you

What's Monsanto when it's at home?

There is a company named Mopnsanto, headquartered in Missouri. I've never had business dealings with it, but I read about a farmer in Canada who bought rapeseed from Monsanto, and was contractually obligated to also buy a pesticide that killed everything *except* the rapeseed, which was genetically engineered by Monsanto. That seems heavyhanded to me.

They have done the same thing to soy and corn and the pollen goes into ungenetically modified fields and fertilizes
that soy and corn and turns it into monsanto soy and corn and then monsanto says the people who own those fields
have stolen monsanto's soy and corn and they sue them. Not to mention the soy and corn is changed.

And now Dupont, monsanto's competition, has agreed with monsanto to buy and sell monsanto's seed.

I am pretty sure wikipedia covers this under Monsanto.

Among other things, Monsanto genetically engineers seeds and sells them to farmers who, because said seeds are patented, aren't allowed to do what farmers have done since human beings first started planting crops - keep some of the seeds their crop produces to plant next season, and if any farmer does such a thing Monsanto's lawyers come down on them like a ton of bricks and sue the farmer for patent infringement, thus ensuring that if the farmer wants to continue growing the crop, which has economic advantages of crop yield and disease resistance genetically engineered into it, the farmer has to buy new seeds from Monsanto every year, as well as the pesticides which the seeds are resistant to.

I don't have words to describe my distaste at the way they do business, other than Edward Heath's description of Lonhro in that they are "the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism".

Oh, and genetically modified foods give me stomach cramps

Erm, most food we grow is genetically modified through centuries of selective breeding anyway.

For those who don't know:

"The Monsanto Company is a US-American chemical company
that achieved worldwide notoriety during the VietNam War.
LSD and Agent Orange have made the company rich."

Their current unpopularity stems (pun intended) from their
policies surrounding their genetically modified seed, as has
been outlined by others above. The seed requires a product-
specific insecticide, new seed cannot be reclaimed and any
wind-drift of the seed into neighboring farms is a case for
charges of theft and copyright violation.

They are rated as the most hated corporation in the whirled.


~jwf~

Monsanto's approach to genetic engineering is just so appalling. Their goal is *not* to make powerful plants. Their goal is to make powerful poison (and to have the only plant that can resist that poison).

Conspiracy theorist would argue that pharmaceutical companies may do the same? Anyone ever seen/read V For Vendetta?

I like it, but it's not my favourite brand of sherry.

B

One indicator of the ethical stance of M*nsanto is that they, along with DuPont and others are pouring millions into defeating measures by certain States in the USA to make them LABEL any food or product that contains GMOs.
I understand that such labelling is obligatory in the EU...not here.

Unless you specifically avoid it, you are already eating it.
Anything made with Corn for example, including "High Fructose Corn Syrup" is GMO.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Dept. of Agriculture (DofA) are staffed all the way to the top with ex-Monsanto employees, who conveniently get their old jobs back when their stint in government is over.
Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court Judge) is an ex-Monsanto att*rney...they are everywhere throughout the government of this country.
Little wonder then that the FDA and the DofA allow Monsanto to conduct its OWN research on new products and declare them 'safe for human consumption' and 'not significantly different from non-GMO products and therefore do not require separate labelling'.

The corn is usually spliced with a gene called BT Toxin. A poison that grows inside the whole plant...you can't wash it off. Any insect that comes along and chews it will have its stomach ruptured before it can chew much more. The corn is then harvested and enters the human food chain directly or indirectly via livestock feed.

The thing is...if it is so safe and wonderful and will save mankind etc. etc...Why are these companies spending so much money trying to hide any indication of its presence on the list of ingredients on the box?

alec.

To be fair, Alex, you could lay most of that template on so many large corporations operating in the US, particularly those involved in food or agribusiness, but Monsanto is one of the worst for those dealings you describe, if not *the* worst. Which is why, as you say, I actively seek out non-GMO food as well as baking my own bread, looking for cheese without growth hormone (also not labelled here) and pick and choose where I eat out.

And they call it progress

I was quite astonished, to find, here in the UK (maybe Europe too, not sure), the list of ingredients companys can not* include.... This works I seem to recall especially for bread, where anything assumed to be 'used up', or 'distoyed' in the baking process, is conveniently not listed on the ingredients; I wonder how many UK vegetarians know they're often eating animal products if they buy shop-bought bread (no, I don't mean just* the yeast, but enzymes and other things, from animal sources, put into commercially produced bread, and also, annoyingly, into various 'things' that smaller bakerys soemtimes add into their bread doughs)..
Mind, I'm still not quite convinced how 'good' the flour is I use for making bread... probalby not great, but it'll have to do until such time as I've established a suitable area so I can order up the 25KG bags from a UK Mill/farm

Don't most of the companys involved in making genetically modified crops, do something pretty much simular?; I seem to recall a lot of fuss a while ago, bout them forcing third world countrys to buy their seeds; all of which were F1 hybrids, so the people in the countrys concerned coudln't keep seed back to grow from the next year... plus tieing them into purchasing the pestacides and other chemical stuff from the same company the provides the seeds

I had never heard of that 2legs - thanks for the info

Well I have to say I am against some of the awful shady practices of companies like Monsanto.

But I do not think it follows that GM is bad per se. In fact GM is going to be required if we are going to avoid mass starvation and mass deforestation in the coming century.

The problem of Monsanto et al needs to be fixed by incredibly robust regulation. It is a failure of de-regulation market capitalism and not a failing of the idea of science and GM.

FB

Please enlighten me of these 'facts' about GMOs being 'required' to avoid mass starvation. Are these facts not actually issued by Monsanto themselves or some puppet group?

alec.